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Out Run is a 3Ddriving video game in which the player controls a Ferrari Testarossa Spider from a third-person rear perspective.[7][8] The camera is placed near the ground, simulating a Ferrari driver's position and limiting the player's view into the distance.[9] The road curves, crests and dips,[10] which increases the challenge by obscuring upcoming obstacles such as traffic.[11] The player's car cannot suffer damage from a collision, but will be slowed down and thus lose time.

The object of the game is to reach one of a variety of destinations against a timer. If the timer reaches zero, the game ends. The player periodically encounters checkpoints near junctions, which add time to the clock. At each junction, the player must choose one of two directions, each of which lead to different environments.

According to the game's designer, Yu Suzuki, the stages of Out Run are mostly based on European scenery, having toured Europe in a BMW 520 for two weeks in order to get ideas.[12] His original concept was to base the game on the America-located film The Cannonball Run (1981) but he largely switched the setting to Europe which he felt offered greater landscape variation.[12] The game's backgrounds and roadside objects include old stone buildings, the Alps, windmills, and Stonehenge-like formations. Suzuki did, however, include American locations such as Devil's Canyon and Death Valley.

The arcade game features raster graphics on a color CRT monitor and amplified stereophonic sound. There are a total of four cabinet designs (two upright and two sit-down), all of which are equipped with a steering wheel with force feedback, a stick shift plus acceleration and brake pedals. The upright cabinet came in two versions: Normal and Mini. The sit-down cabinets resembled the in-game car and used a drive motor to move the main cabinet—turning and shaking according to the onscreen action. There were two versions of the sit down: the Deluxe version featured a 26-inch color monitor and a custom molded seat, while the Standard featured a more simplified design and a 20-inch color monitor.[5][13]

The sit-down deluxe cabinet version of Out Run

Running on the Sega OutRunarcade system board, the game achieved its 3D effects using a sprite-scaling technique called 'Super-Scaler' technology (first used one year earlier in Hang-On and Space Harrier). This allowed a large number of scaled sprites to be displayed on the screen at the same time. Like the Sega Space Harrier games, the pseudo-3D sprite/tile scaling in Out Run was handled in a similar manner to textures in later texture-mappedpolygonal 3D games of the 1990s.[14]Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki stated that his "designs were always 3D from the beginning. All the calculations in the system were 3D, even from Hang-On. I calculated the position, scale, and zoom rate in 3D and converted it backwards to 2D. So I was always thinking in 3D."[15]

Out Run's original score was composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi, who had previously composed soundtracks for other games designed by Suzuki, and was a part of the S.S.T. Band, Sega's in-house band at the time. Out Run was the first video arcade game that allowed the user to choose the background music.[16][17] The soundtrack consisted of both jazz fusion, similar in style to that of Casiopea, and Latin/Caribbean music, similar to Miami Sound Machine. In all, three selectable tracks were featured: Passing Breeze, Splash Wave and Magical Sound Shower. An additional track, Last Wave, played at the final score screen.[18][19][13][5]

The 1991 Mega Drive/Genesis port added an additional track entitled Step On Beat, written by Masayoshi Ishi. The 2014 Nintendo 3DS version features two additional tracks, titled Cruising Line and Camino a Mi Amor, composed respectively using the original game's sound hardware by Manabu Namiki and Jane-Evelyn "Chibi-Tech" Nisperos.[20][21] In more recent years, the game's music greatly inspired a musical genre known as synthwave.[citation needed]

Clare Edgeley reviewed the arcade game in both Computer and Video Games (January 1987) and in Sinclair User (February 1987), praising the graphics and the element of danger in the gameplay.[9][11] A review in Commodore User (March 1987) described it as "a great game for driving enthusiasts" and awarded it a score of 9 out of 10.[27] Gary Penn, writing for Crash (April 1987) called the game "highly polished" and praised the attention to detail.[10] In Your Sinclair (August 1987), Peter Shaw praised its realism and described it as "the most frighteningly fast road race game I've ever played".[60]

The Sega Master System version was praised. Computer and Video Games (October 1987) concluded that it had "all the thrill power of the arcade version."[29]The Games Machine gave the Master System version a score of 72%, stating that the Master System version came closest to the original coin-op.[42] Reviewers for Dragon described it as a "refreshing" game "that provides hours of entertainment".[33]Computer Gaming World named it as the year's best arcade translation for Sega.[63]

The reception for the 8-bit personal computer ports published elsewhere by U.S. Gold was mixed. The ZX Spectrum version received positive scores from Your Sinclair[46] and Sinclair User.[64][40] Some reviewers at Crash expressed disappointment at the low quality in contrast to the arcade original.[32]The Games Machine gave the Spectrum version a score of 61%, noting the machine's technical limitations in comparison to the Master System and Commodore systems.[42]

The Commodore versions received positive to average reviews, though Computer and Video Games described the Commodore 64 port as "rushed".[30] The Amstrad CPC port received a score of 8 out of 40 from Computer and Video Games, which described it as a "travesty".[30]

There have been numerous follow-up titles to Out Run, including Out Run 3-D (1988), Turbo Out Run (1989), and OutRunners (1992), among many others. Out Run 2 was released in 2003 to critical acclaim, and has been followed by further titles.